Friday, May 15, 2015

Red Red Rick

Ricky, you've got some 'splainin' to do.

How do you go from Tea Party capitalist to crybaby socialist? It's easy, just let your fear of Obama override your common sense. Flailing about without a moral compass or core principle and anything is possible!

Observe.

Meet the latest version of Rick Scott, wealthy hospital executive turned tea party candidate turned free-market governor. And now, it would seem, a socialist. The man who bought the Governor's Mansion with millions from building the nation's largest hospital chain wants Florida's hospitals to share their profits if they receive public money to treat the poor. That is quite a transformation, but this is a governor who will say anything to avoid acting responsibly and accepting federal Medicaid expansion money.

Scott has asked hospital executives and his kangaroo health care commission to create a plan for hospitals to share profits to cover the potential loss of the Low Income Pool, a $2 billion pot of public money that helps cover the cost of treating the uninsured. The Obama administration has warned for more than a year that the account will expire at the end of June and that the federal government's $1.3 billion contribution to it will disappear. Of course, this would not be an issue if Scott and House Republicans would accept billions in Medicaid expansion money to buy private coverage for 800,000 uninsured Floridians.

Imagine the shrill howls of contempt from the FoxNews crowd if Obama proposed that oil companies 'share' their profits. Communist Communist Communist!

But now that Rick's affinity for socialism is out in the open, perhaps there is a real solution to Florida's healthcare crisis after all. Shuttle service to Cuba will be up and running soon, so now we can send Florida's working poor, the ones who would have been covered by the Medicaid expansion, to Cuba where healthcare is free and abundant. Next to sugar and cigars, doctors are Cuba's number 1 export. They have that nifty cancer vaccine, gorgeous tropical weather, and people that are so kind, not to mention sexy, that I married one.

Carting Americans off to be subjected to the horrors of socialist medicine??? It will be just one more reason for the rich to envy the poor!